In Hockey, It Can’t Hurt to Hit the Ice Early

GOAL! Jenny Potter and parts of her workout.Credit
Stephanie Colgan for The New York Times

WHEN Jenny Potter first learned to play hockey as a child on an outdoor rink in Edina, Minn., she had no idea that she had already given herself a huge edge.

By learning to skate as a toddler, she put herself in position to become what she is today: a forward on the United States Olympic women’s ice hockey team, already a three-time medalist and a mother of two.

But when she was a child on that rink, all she wanted to do was to play in neighborhood hockey games the way her father did.

“When we’d go to the park, he’d play in pickup games and I’d always want to join,” Ms. Potter said. “He’d be like, ‘Not till you’re bigger.’ He was afraid I’d get run over by the big guys.”

Ms. Potter, 31, grew up in the early years of women’s hockey, when there were few organized programs and no Olympic team to idolize. The International Olympic Committee did not add women’s hockey until the 1998 Games, when Ms. Potter, who was then 19, played on the team that won the gold medal.

The inclusion of women’s hockey in the Olympics gave it a huge boost in the United States, although it continues to grow slowly. USA Hockey, the sport’s governing body, said that in winter 2008-9, 59,506 of its 465,975 player members were women — about 13 percent. Of those, the most (11,634) live in Ms. Potter’s home state, Minnesota.

Ms. Potter is their standard-bearer. Going into Vancouver, she has already collected medals — a gold, a silver and a bronze — at the Games in 1998, 2002 and 2006. Today, she is the oldest member of the American team, as well as the only mother.

Her 9-year-old daughter, Madison, and 3-year-old son, Cullen, have become fixtures at the national team practice rinks. Ms. Potter and her husband, Rob Potter, a high school hockey coach, run Potter’s Pure Hockey, a hockey school in Coon Rapids, Minn., just north of Minneapolis.

SKATING Ms. Potter’s parents taught her to skate almost as soon as she could walk. Since all of hockey’s skills — stick-handling and shooting, maneuvering on the ice and playing through contact — must be built on top of the ability to skate, the more naturally that comes, the better.

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BACK EXTENSION For hamstrings, gluts and lower back, since players skate bent over.Credit
Stephanie Colgan for The New York Times

“You can learn anytime, but when you’re young, your fear isn’t as big,” she said. “I taught my kids to skate when they were little, so they don’t have fear going out on their skates. It’s all about balance and just getting comfortable on your skates and blades.”

One of the best drills is familiar to figure skaters. “Cross-overs are very important,” Ms. Potter said. “By going around in circles that are increasingly smaller, young players will improve on their edge techniques.”

SKILLS ON THE ICE Ms. Potter said that the myriad skills involved in hockey — handling a stick and a puck, passing and shooting — are what keeps the sport so fascinating, because there are always aspects to improve.

Developing power on the ice is one of the trickier skills. One drill she recommends goes like this: skate holding two sticks at the blade end, the handle ends extending behind. Another player, on his or her knees, holds the two handles. The skater drags the other player along the ice, which requires the skater to crouch low and push hard, developing muscles that produce power in the stride.

On their Web site, Ms. Potter and her husband link to a series of USA Hockey videos showing their favorite stick-handling drills. They suggest choosing three drills a day and doing them three times each, for a total of nine. The drills can be done off the ice with a ball or on the ice with a puck, but if done off-ice, it is important to stand in a skating stance with your knees bent.

One drill: put two pucks shoulder-width apart and maneuver a third puck (or ball) in a figure-eight around the others, without touching them while keeping your head up, facing forward.

Shooting is the skill that separates players into levels, Ms. Potter said. Great scorers are rare and, thus, instantly valuable.

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“I’d say the most important thing is accuracy,” she said. “The second thing would be quickness, how quick you can get the shot off. As you get older, the goalies get better, and then it’s all about changing the angle on the shot because you have to make the goalie move.”

The most basic shooting drills are done at any level of hockey practice: quick shots, either shooting a line of pucks in rapid succession or taking quick passes and shooting immediately. The power comes from the downswing, but the direction comes from contact with the puck.

“It’s about where you put your puck on the stick,” Ms. Potter said. “You want to come down on one side or the other. If you come straight down, you don’t make the goalie move.”

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LATERAL BOUNDS These exercises improve acceleration and speed while skating.Credit
Stephanie Colgan for The New York Times

ENDURANCE TRAINING Fitness for hockey at an elite level requires a combination of strength, endurance and speed. Players take the ice for 30- to 40-second shifts, then rest for perhaps 90 seconds, and they must return to full speed immediately. “It’s a uniquely demanding game,” said Teena Murray, USA Hockey’s strength and conditioning coach, who is also the director of sports performance at the University of Louisville. “You need a lot of core strength and hip flexibility. It’s an anaerobic sport, so our conditioning is interval based and you have to maintain a balance between training for speed and training for power.”

To play at the national team level, Ms. Murray said, women must have 12 to 16 percent body fat, be able to squat twice their body weight, and have a vertical jump of 24 inches.

Ms. Murray said that Ms. Potter was one of the two fittest players on the team. “She has the biggest quads of any female athlete I’ve ever seen,” she said. “She had two children and she still has 14 percent body fat, and she is strong as an ox.”

IN THE OFF SEASON Ms. Potter described the summer workout program at Potter’s Pure Hockey, which draws elite female players, N.H.L. draft hopefuls and college players. Six days out of seven, Ms. Potter and the other participants run an interval sprint program at varying intensities.

She called Tuesdays “hell day” because “nobody would ever want to do it.” The schedule calls for three sets of six sprints, at all-out speed of 35 seconds each, with 35 seconds’ rest. As the summer goes along, the intervals increase to 45 seconds. “After the first set, you’re like, ‘I’m done,’ ” Ms. Potter said. “That’s a really hard day.”

The running is done in the morning, followed by an hour-and-a-half skating session. After lunch there are shooting drills, an exercise that involves hopping while holding 30- to 40-pound sandbags, and then working out in the weight room.

Then, unlike most players, Ms. Potter leaves to take care of her children.

Fitness became Ms. Potter’s priority while training through her two pregnancies. Both of her children were born in January and both times, she played in the world championship in March. Madison was born in January 2001, and her mother made her second Olympic team that August.

Ms. Potter said she had no idea what to expect after she gave birth. She had skated into her ninth month, then took six weeks off before trying to regain her conditioning.

“First, my husband, Rob, ran me through skating workouts with starts and stops and long intervals to get my endurance up,” she said. “After the first pregnancy, we learned to not go as hard at first. We gradually worked into it, using swimming to strengthen and lose weight because it’s easier on the body.”

Lately, she has been able to keep her weight steady instead of having it fluctuate. “I’ve been more and more aware of eating good foods, natural foods and organic foods,” Ms. Potter said. “Now that I have kids, I want them to eat healthy too.”

They already know how to skate, having learned from a four-time Olympian, which means they have an edge in hockey already.

This is the second in a series featuring Winter Olympic hopefuls who offer training tips and fitness advice.

A version of this article appears in print on February 11, 2010, on Page E11 of the New York edition with the headline: In Hockey, It Can’t Hurt To Hit the Ice Early. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe